Six months after their April 6, 2026 lunar flyby, the Artemis II crew's naked-eye observations are out in NASA's Artemis II Preliminary Lunar Science Report. According to Mashable, commander Reid Wiseman spotted the first flash from NASA's Orion capsule, calling out, "I just saw a flash, 100 percent," and placing it at about the 7 or 8 o'clock position on the moon. Moments later he and crewmate Jeremy Hansen saw another, which Hansen described as a "pinprick" of light on the moon's lower third — "just like a bloop." In total the crew logged five tiny sparks from space rocks slamming into the lunar surface, which Mashable notes may be the faintest impact flashes humans have ever seen.

The sightings genuinely surprised NASA's own science team. Kelsey Young, the mission's lunar science operations lead, admitted she had not expected the crew to see any micrometeorites at all — Mashable reports her jaw dropped in the Houston control room as the space-to-ground audio played, and she later said she heard "audible screams of delight" from the science evaluation room. The mission flew during a quiet stretch of the year, outside any major meteor shower, making detections even less likely. Wiseman pushed back on skeptical explanations, saying, "It was not sunglint off of particulate from the thrusters or the purge tanks. It was definitely impact flashes on the moon."

Each flash happened on the moon's unlit side, timed to when the moon blocked the sun from Orion's view so the astronauts' eyes could adjust in darkness. None showed color, and each vanished instantly. Based on how faint they appeared, scientists think rocks only a few centimeters across — perhaps grape- or walnut-sized — caused them, per Mashable. The crew, including Victor Glover and Christina Koch, sketched each location on a tablet while memories were fresh. Notably, the cameras got nothing: an external camera filmed about two minutes of the eclipse at 30 frames per second and caught no flashes, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter could not photograph sites likely too small for its camera. The observations lend credibility to Apollo 16 and 17 crews' reported flashes a half-century ago, adding to over 400 logged by Earth telescopes.

Each flash tells scientists how often bits of comets and asteroids pummel the moon and where they strike — numbers NASA wants before sending astronauts to live and work there. Lori Glaze, a senior NASA official, told Mashable the agency will use such data to judge the risk meteorites, even the tiniest space rocks, pose to future moon bases. The flyby also yielded a second kind of human observation: in the same preliminary report, the crew described surprising color on the lunar surface. Live Science reports that at Aristarchus Plateau, Christina Koch likened the region to "a yellow snow-capped mountain" and Glover noted brown streaks and green tones, which the report associates with titanium-rich and magnesium-rich volcanic glass beads. The report authors concluded that human observers, continuously interpreting their surroundings, proved "exceptional value" as scientific assets in planetary exploration.